that is horrendous in the most beautiful way

Ben. He/him. 30.

[enquined]

[mewvore]

Did a challenge where you get a random word and make a comic in one day based on it! The word I got was "boy"

[todayintokyo]

Tiger by 十筆斎

[mmmmalo]

MY OWN DRAWING MADE ME LAUGH, SO I WROTE A ROMFIC TO ACCOMMODATE THE VISUAL INTERPRETATION

KARKAT: HELLO TEREZI. TEREZI: H3LLO K4RK4T BOTH: 1I A4M ON TH3E RE3BOUND FROM D4ATI1NG TH4AT OTHE3R CH4ARA4CT3ER PE3OPL3E L1IKE3 TO SHI1P ME3 W1ITH, A4ND 4AM DE3SP4ARA4T3E TO RE3K1INDLE3 4AN OLD FLA4M3E. KARKAT: TEREZI YOU LOOK VERY HANDSOME TODAY. TEREZI: 4ND YOU LOOK V3RY PR3TTY TOD4Y K4RK4T BOTH: RE3C1IPROCI1TY H4AVI1NG B3EE3N 3ESTA4BL1ISHE3D: KARKAT: TEREZI I AM GOING TO GRAB YOUR BOOBS NOW.

KARKAT: TEREZI I AM GRABBING YOUR BOOBS NOW. TEREZI: K4RK4T YOU 4R3 GR4BB1NG MY BOOBS NOW KARKAT: IT FEELS GOOD. TEREZI: 1T F33LS GOOD BOTH: A4WOOG4A A4WOOG4A.

[maxknightley]

it's fucked up that aphex twin is just one guy

[maxknightley]

there should be a pair of twins that make edm together and they call themselves "aphex triplets"

[wordcubed]

[mmmmalo]

[mmmmalo]

[mmmmalo]

[mmmmalo]

[hbmmaster]

you gotta stop calling homestuck a comic and start calling it a game

[hbmmaster]

homestuck has approximately none of the features of a comic and approximately all of the features of a video game. people only call it a webcomic in the first place by analogy with problem sleuth, which also wasn't a webcomic

[hbmmaster]

homestuck is not a "webcomic with multimedia elements". xkcd is a webcomic with multimedia elements. homestuck is a multimedia story without any webcomic elements

[failure-artist]

but calling it a video game will further confuse newgens as to what homestuck is

[hbmmaster]

why? I don't see how calling it a video game could possibly be more confusing to newcomers than calling it a webcomic on account of how it isn't a webcomic and it is a video game

[failure-artist]

but it’s not accessed like a video game, it’s accessed like a webcomic.

[hbmmaster]

what? are you like, unfamiliar with the concept of a browser game?

[kaiasky]

are you being deliberately obtuse

[hbmmaster]

excuse me?

[kaiasky]

usually the people who seem dedicated to wildly missing the point on a hbmmaster thread are *other* people, not you. so I'm inclined to think you're doing a bit rather than wildly missing the point?

If you say "homestuck is a browser game" people are going to imagine like, any amount of statefulness or mechanics beyond "the current page you are at". They might expect, for instance, that collecting grist in the flash games might cause a "grist counter" to go up an enable them to do things later down the line. this does not happen--you can always just turn the page if you are not enjoying the walkabout.

the primary action in homestuck is "turning the page" from one screen with one or more panels of images and/or dialog to the next screen. like a comic. you turn the page (==>) and something new is happening, and you interpret the image and text as a progression from what was happening in the previous page, like a comic.

i guess I just fundamentally do not understand what makes homestuck "not a webcomic" here. the lack of multiple panels formatted on the same page? the fact the dialogue is in text boxes rather than in text bubbles within the image? those are different, sure, but... like, "comic" as a medium also encompasses everything from Peanuts to DC to Junji Ito to other experimental works that fuck with format at least as much as Homestuck does.

caveats: 1) yes homestuck took suggestions for a few acts. this gives PS more of a claim to videogameness than HS would and in any case does not affect the modern reader's experience. 2) yes linear VNs exist. i understand that there is a blurriness between Psycholonials (VN) and Homestuck (webcomic) i understand the classification of all things is ultimately arbitrary. I think stylistically homestuck is clearly not a VN, though.

[daniel-r-h]

I think the “accessed like a webcomic” point is dumb for a variety of reasons

Browser games exist and you access them by going to a website, like Homestuck worked originally

Games that were not originally browser games, like Super Mario Brothers, can be accessed via the web browser

Today you often access Homestuck as an offline archive

You can also access indisputable-webcomics as an offline archive.

For those keeping track at home, this means that video games, webcomics, and Homestuck all have “access through web browser” and “access not through web browser” modes.

In every other way Iʼm aware of, hbmmaster seems to be wrong in this thread. I have not actually read/played/watched/consumed/[insert verb of your choice]ed Homestuck and could just be very wrong, but it sure sounds like the main “player interaction” is clicking a next button (possibly with a different label). Visual novels tend to have some choices to them often with remembered state.

[hbmmaster]

wait so you've never played homestuck so you're just assuming that I'm like, making up the interactivity entirely? without checking?

[magiconic]

If Misali would actually give an explanation for why he says its More Like A Game than a webcomic (besides "it has no webcomic elements," like give examples) it would probably help a lot. Ive gone through a decent chunk of homestuck (past the 2nd Actual Game part with the trolls) but it seems kinda weird to be like "theres a couple sections where you control a character and interact with a world, and everything around it is an unskippable cutscene" (Dunno if thats their actual argument, but its the only one I can think of, and it feels a bit disingenuous)

[hbmmaster]

homestuck is a linear browser based visual novel. there's animated gifs with text boxes below them and you press a button to advance to the next text box, and occasionally there's a minigame or an ultimately inconsequential branching path.

[tripp-pants-sora]

I guess you could reasonably call that a video game in addition to a webcomic, but I'm struggling to understand why you'd call it a video game to the exclusion of being a webcomic

[hbmmaster]

because it doesn't have anything in common with webcomics apart from "being online" and "containing illustrations"? I think I went over this already

[th4nkyoub3n]

Is Prequel a visual novel? I read it a long time ago and don't plan on coming back to it, but I think it started as a forum adventure on the mspa forums.

[k25ff]

Twenty-five days as an Isekai'd hero

First day as an isekai'd hero I'm trying to explain gunpowder to a sceptical elf but I can't remember what saltpetre is so I'm just here talking about sulphur and charcoal and someone called Salty Pete and she's pretty sure I'm talking out my arse.

Second day as an isekai'd hero I'm still trying to get this busty elf to understand guns and I'm talking about how someone can be minimally trained and still be very dangerous at range and she just says yes I know what a crossbow is ma'am.

Third day as an isekai'd hero and my limited knowledge of fractional distillation is causing me to sound like a nutcase when I talk about the alchemical separation of naptha into more useful things.

Fourth day as an isekai'd hero and I finally manage to do a demonstration of what 'elecricity' is using a piece of cloth and amber and while the elf is pretty impressed, I've got no idea how to get from here to anything actually useful.

Fifth day as an isekai'd hero and the symbol of the Evil Emperor of Woe just kinda looks like the 'cool S' and the busty elf looks at me strangely when I only barely manage to stop myself laughing at it when she shows me a history book.

Sixth day as an isekai'd hero and turns out yelling in pain after I dropped the Holy Sword on my foot has accidentally summoned a demon called Gsh'Dargn.

Seventh day as an isekai'd hero and the elf's still not talking to me after the demon-summoning fiasco but luckily demons of minced oaths are pretty much made of wet cardboard and I managed to beat it to death with the sheathed Holy Sword.

Eighth day as an isekai'd hero and my vague description of what I remember about the Bessemer process makes the elf tackle me to the ground, knife against my neck, demanding to know how I learned the secret elven techniques for coke-efficient steel.

Ninth day as an isekai'd hero and I'm still feeling a bit fluttery after day eight and I'm wondering what else is a secret elven technique I can pretend to know so I can get pinned down more.

Tenth day as an isekai'd hero and I think the elf has worked out that I don't actually know all that much about steel production so she's a bit less wary of me which is a shame good thing I guess.

Eleventh day as an isekai'd hero and it turns out I'm immediately able to guess the major traits and possible weaknesses of the Six Kings of Destruction because they're inexplicably themed after bionicles.

Twelfth day as an isekai'd hero and I was rambling about spreadsheets or something and the elf got very interested and to cut a long story short I think I've invented something called 'double-entry bookkeeping'?

Thirteenth day as an isekai'd hero and I nearly get us captured by the border guard of the Evil Empire because it turns out their salute is a dab and I burst out laughing and now the elf isn't talking to me again.

Fourteenth day as an isekai'd hero and I manage to coax the elf back into speaking to me by describing movable type printing although she doesn't really see the point given how expensive good paper is, and I don't know anything about how that works except that maybe it involves wood.

Fifteenth day as an isekai'd hero and I finally remember how you make saltpetre and run up to the elf yelling something incoherent about guano, startling her so badly she tackles me to the ground again so honestly it's a win-win.

Sixteenth day as an isekai'd hero and we get sidetracked by organising a guano expedition in the dwarf caves and the elf gets bitten by a bat and now I'm trying to explain the concept of rabies vaccines with tears in my eyes but she says we have potions for that.

Seventeenth day as an isekai'd hero and the alchemist we hired is working on the saltpetre maybe so we're going dungeoneering and I manage to solve a puzzle by arranging the tiles into the Loss glyph and I think Isekai God or someone is fucking with me.

Eighteenth day as an isekai'd hero and I finally manage to invent gunpowder only to be undercut by this dwarf alchemist asking why I'm so exciting about making black powder, I ask the elf if she knew about this and she shrugs and says she hasn't visited a dwarf city in fifty years.

Nineteenth day as an isekai'd hero and after several hours rephrasing my question to an increasingly bored alchemist I've determined that no-one's heard of a concept like fireworks so I've ordered a massive amount of paper and gunpowder and I'm going to finally get something done.

Twentieth day as an isekai'd hero: healer's tnet.

Twenty-first day as an isekai'd hero and I think I'm getting the hang of this fireworks thing even though the elf is watching me sceptically from a distance with a bucket of water.

Twenty-second day as an isekai'd hero and I ask the alchemist if they've got any chemicals that burn different colours and they're like what do you mean what kind of alchemist would I be if I didn't, so I think this fireworks plan might be coming together.

Twenty-third day as an isekai'd hero and the alchemist agrees to help me put on a fireworks show for a share of the profits and also because it sounds sick as hell.

Twenty-fourth day as an isekai'd hero and I stand under the fireworks with the awestruck elf and. Um. I take her hand and tell her how I feel.

Twenty-fifth day as an isekai'd hero and. Woagh. Elfs good at kissing.

[jncos]

I have the kind of brain disease where my reaction to shrooms is “I have an idea for a Garfield comic”

[marcelshorjian]

> THE JESTER

[k25ff]

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW.

Foreach is a comic by lumsel about escapism, the world in knots, and infinite tortoises. It’s fantastic.

(1490)

[ebi-hime]

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a pleasant holiday season, and I wish you all a happy new year!

To kick 2025 off, I'd like to announce a shiny new(?) project I've been working on very slowly for the last couple of years.

As you might have gathered by the title, I've been cobbling together a remake of the first VN I ever released on Steam: the yandere horror/romance story The Way We All Go! You can find the original game here, and the remake here!

The Way We All Go was my very first commercial VN, and it has a special place in my heart. I'm still very fond of the characters, especially Amu and Noelle (Amu even cameos in some of my newer VNs from time to time haha). During the last few years I started to wonder how the VN would look if I'd released it today.

When I wrote The Way We All Go, I was in my second year of university and I didn't have a job. I was dividing my time between writing essays and working on my horror game, which became quite expansive (somehow it wound up being over 200,000 words long), and I didn't have the budget to make it a big, flashy production.

I was a complete newbie when it came to commercial game dev. I'd made a few short, free VNs in the past, but there were all pretty humble, and I made them with purely free for use assets. I'd never commissioned an artist before when I started The Way We All Go, and I remember I was actually very anxious about the commissioning process in general haha ;;;

Given how small my budget was, it feels lke a miracle I was able to commission the few talented artists that I did for the spites and CGs. I didn't have the funds to give it any additional polish, however, and I had to use photographic backgrounds and stock music to finish it. Compared to my newer titles, it looks a little rogh around the edges, but I did the best I could with the resources I had at the time to make something special! I'm still fond of The Way We All Go and how it turned out, despite all of its early game jank, which is why I decided to remake it! I wanted to pump a bit more money into it, and give it the gloss I couldn't afford when I was starting out. The remake will have completely new character sprites, and some supporting characters who didn't have sprites befoe will get them now, like Noelle's mother and Amu's father. The new backgrounds, meanwhile, are all drawn by hand and commissioned for this project, and the soundtrack will be fully original too. I'm upscaling the game to 1080px, instead of the old postage stamp-sized 800x600, and it has a shiny new UI! I will be releasing the remake in 2025, though I'm not entirely sure when. I was hoping to release the remake on March 24th, to coincide with the release of the original VN on Steam. However, I'm not sure if the remake will be finished by then, as I need to recode the whole thing (the old code was Utterly Terrible lmao it's quite shocking...) You can wishlist the remake on Steam here if you're interested! I'll keep working hard on it. Thank you for all of your support until now; it's appreciated!

[papaya-inspiration]

Foreach 2024 Reader Survey Results

So, my buddy @lumsel makes a lil webcomic called Foreach. I help 'em out with it sometimes. The comic's website doesn't have a comment section, so I thought it'd be fun to do a little year-end survey to see who was reading and what they think!

We had an incredible response, with 279 respondents to the survey--more than are in the Foreach discord server! So let's get into it.

Character Popularity Poll

Alright, let's start with the thing I know y'all are most excited about. As the comic creators, we love all our characters equally... but clearly you guys don't!

☀️ SUNNY SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!! ☀️

Y'all REALLY like Sunny, eh? Don't worry, us too. In fact, 80.3% of you listed her in your top 3 favorite characters. Hell yeah.

The next top four characters are the four game protagonists, with Jiro ranking top, then Nix, Cliff and Coral. A lot of readers also mentioned Jiro as particularly relatable/lovable in the write in box at the end of the form. (Don't worry, I won't tell him y'all like him this much. Though with this many Love Warriors, Proteus won't stand a chance invading the island.) I was a bit surprised to see Jasper/Coral ranked as the lowest of the four protagonists! Given that the comic initially presents her as the "anchor" character and a jumping off point for the story as a whole--but that also means she's among the least unusual of the four protagonists, and thus stands out less? It's a hypothesis.

After that, we have Polyta (which makes a lot of sense, she's had some of the most page time of the side characters), then Mercy and Doctor Kree'zik. I wonder if some of this is recency bias, partiularly in Kree'zik's case, seeing as we haven't gotten much past xer character introduction yet. I'll be curious to see how these numbers shift if we run this again next year!

We also got some minor character write ins! Several people said they enjoyed various Aveans, with two votes specifically for the Avean Captains and someone else voting for the avean grunt from page 106 who says "Thanks a bundle!" And I agree: they're pretty adorable. Another person listed "the author" as their favorite character which... you know what, it is a fairly meta comic, so I'll allow it. (Even though, hilariously, Lum is the only member of the creative team to have not had a character cameo in the comic yet.)

Also shout out to the person who wrote in that they almost listed the character cameos for Peri and Kiki (the rat and the rabbit from pgs 24-25) as their favorites. I see you and appreciate you <3

Game Popularity Poll

Not a ton to say about this. People seem to like cozy-ish indie games and furry aesthetics. Makes sense to me.

Comic Info

How are people finding Foreach?

As always, word of mouth is CRUCIAL for indie webcomics getting off the ground. You guys sharing and linking it to friends and communities is really the engine behind getting eyes onto our art--so thank you!

We got another big boost from joining the @spiderforestcomics webcomic collective. So far, it's been a great experience and we've been loving the community over there. So if you're in the market for more comics, definitely go check out some of theirs!

I should note that there is definitely some overlap between these categories. We let people mark multiple answers, so many people marked "Word of Mouth (online)" in addition to other categories like Tumblr and other discord servers. In that broader category, there where several places that people specifically noted finding the comic including:

Our reader Digamma has been tirelessly reposting the comic to the Something Awful forums, and it looks like quite a few people have been keeping up from there! Thanks, Digamma, you're a certified super-spreader!

Dan of @thewebcomicsreview has linked to Foreach several times!

People also mentioned finding it through various discord communities, including the Star Impact server, a server for puzzle games, Foxglove Comics, and others

Rilly had a cameo in @erinptah's webcomic, Leif and Thorne!

Several people discovered it directly through the Neocities discover page!

Cohost, Cloudhiker, and a fairly lukewarm substack review... which nonetheless garnered us a few readers. I'll take it!

Currently, Foreach doesn't pay for traditional banner ads of any kind. So everytime you tell a friend about the comic or share a link to it, you're helping us out a ton! Thank you!

How are people keeping up with comic updates?

Not too much to say on this. Lots of manual checkers, and it looks like we're getting good mileage out of that RSS feed. Excellent!

Readership Info

Discord Membership

We had more survey responses than people currently in the Foreach discord. But even more excitingly, only about one third of survey respondents are also in the discord. Which is exciting, because it means there's more of a readership out there checking the comic updates than we knew previously!

Additionally, I'm personally excited by this result because hearing from those quieter members of our reader base is precisely why I wanted to put out this survey. We have a lovely, active community in the discord, but as a side effect that means we're hearing a lot of opinions from just one, disproportionately vocal part of our reader base. My hope with this survey was that we'd get a chance to hear some voices that we don't usually get to interact with... So for all you silent majority readers out there: Hello! Thanks so much for chiming in!

Patreon Membership

Most of our readers don't back the patreon. Which is to be expected! We actually got a few new patrons signing up after the survey was posted, which is absolutely lovely of y'all. (Hi new patrons! 👋)

If you're wondering what the Patreon money gets used for, it's a mixture of funding extras the comic and supporting Lum's future creative endeavors. This year, we used a big chunk of the funding to commission the Love Bomb portraits for the new Cast Page, which were done by the talented Beajrb (go check out their work!) In the future, some of it may be used for commission work related to the comic, and also for the long term goal for Lum to take some time off their day job to draw comics/make games/etc.

We also asked what else people might like to see us do with the patreon. Right now, we post author commentary on pages with about a 2-chapter lag time, and people seem pretty happy with that over all. There were a few requests for bonus character art, pin ups, or character-asks, and we'll keep that in mind going forward. Since all of us are working full time, there's only limited time we have for making additional content, but who knows what the future holds!

Reader Geography

So where in the world are our readers? Well, I I thought it'd be fun to make this cute little map:

...which turned out to be a huge pain in the ass and a little misleading with the color ranges. So here it is another way:

Our reader base is very American-heavy. Honestly a little moreso than I was expecting? Maybe it's the magnetic charisma of Cliff Mason drawing that keeps drawing them in?

But is it a good comic?

According to our readers, it's a 5.35/5 star comic. Make of that what you will :3

Final Thoughts

At the end of the form, we had an open response box for anything else y'all might want to say to us. And let me just say: y'all blew us away. Thank you so much.

So many of the comments were incredibly kind. People told us about characters they connected to, about how excited they were for to see what happens next. Some of them were sweet, some were horny, some of you compared Foreach to some of OUR favorite webcomics, (which was absolutely unreal to read!) Some of you guys wrote whole freakin' essays! I can't recap everything, but please know that we read every single one of them.

Thank you again for joining us on this journey. Here's to a great 2025--and another year of Freachin' it together!

[th4nkyoub3n]

i don't even use tumblr anymore

[th4nkyoub3n]

I hope you've matured since 2017.

no